


One and Two and Three and Four

by orphan_account



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Friendship Angst, Gen, but also love, it's complicated - Freeform, post-4x02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-30
Updated: 2016-09-30
Packaged: 2018-08-18 15:40:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8167175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: A post-4x02 ficlet, ruminating on the thoughts and emotional state of Daisy, Fitz, Mack, and Jemma. Daisy and her guilt. Fitz and his abandonment. Mack and his betrayal. Jemma and her loss of control.





	

**[One: Daisy]**

_I left them, I left them, I left them._

While Robbie busies himself with throwing together something edible–although anything would be edible to her, at this point, she hardly eats anymore–her words keep rolling around in her head.

Fitz was right. She had left them, but he doesn’t understand. He doesn’t get it, because while terrible things have happened to all of them, none of it had ever been their fault.

But lately? All these terrible things are her fault. 

It’s not just Lincoln, even though her heart squeezes every time she even thinks his name. It all goes back. It goes back _so far_. Those SHIELD agents who dropped her off at St. Agnes. The endless agents who died trying to protect her, from move to move to move. Ward dropping FitzSimmons out of the sky. Raina’s death. Her mother’s death, at the hands of her now-brainwashed father. That Monolith never would have been on their base if it hadn’t been for the war between the Inhumans and SHIELD. It would have stayed on that boat. Jemma wouldn’t have spent six months in hell. Fitz wouldn’t have nearly killed himself to save her. 

Coulson would still have his right hand. He wouldn’t have spent months without May. May–May would have healed. She had finally begun to put herself back together, during their time on the Bus and even at the Playground, but it had been Daisy who rebuffed her in favor of her newly found family. It had been Daisy’s life that had collided with May’s, eventually turning her ex-husband into a monster. A monster who died to save her. 

It takes all of these tragedies before Daisy even gets close to Lincoln on the timeline of horrible things that have gone wrong because of her. 

Wherever she goes, death follows. 

And she can’t–she _won’t_ –let it touch them. 

She hasn’t turned her back on them. She never could. She’s looking out for them, protecting them, doing everything she can. 

If only they could see that.

She slides open her phone and stares at the photo on the screen, taken shortly before she had been swayed by Hive. Lincoln, Jemma, Fitz, and Mack, all sitting on the couches in the Playground. 

They had been playing video games. Jemma and Lincoln were particularly awful at it, and were mostly just getting in the way on purpose. 

It had been something special, between all of them. A moment of peace in the chaos. 

Her thumb covers Lincoln’s face. 

One. Fitz.

Two. Jemma.

Three. Mack. 

Robbie clears his throat in the doorway and she looks up. 

“You ready?” he asks. She nods, swallows hard, and shoves her phone back into her pocket. 

They might not understand, but they don’t need to. They just need to stay alive. 

**[Two: Fitz]**

As soon as they get back to base, he breaks into her bunk.

They’d all left it alone. Even the new Director had respected their wishes to leave it unoccupied, exactly the way that she had left it. 

But Fitz can’t do that anymore. If she’s going to destroy herself and turn her back on them? Well, then she doesn’t get a place here anymore. It’s not just about her anymore, and it’s not about what she’s done to him. 

Mack has lost enough. Izzy and Idaho. Bobbi and Hunter. All ties to his family. Then Daisy.

And now? Now Daisy wants to take _YoYo_ from him too? 

Anger pulses through him, the kind that he’s never been good at properly controlling. Her code is the same as it was on the bus. 

1, 2, 3, 4. 

For a hacker, she hadn’t bothered with a complicated password. For all her big loner show, she had never tried that hard to keep them out of her life. To keep them out of her heart. 

She couldn’t even do them the dignity of _looking_ at them. 

He bursts into her bunk and starts ripping things off of the walls. The photos and the mementos, the little pieces of her still left in this dusty room. 

It takes him a long time before he realizes that he’s crying, and when he does, he collapses onto the floor.

His face falls into his hands and he lets it all out, for one moment. He was there for her. He never, ever turned his back on her even when everyone else did. He trusted her more than anyone, even Jemma. 

And she just _left_. 

He looks up at the mess he’s made. Quietly and gently, he begins putting it all back together. 

**[Three: Mack]**

He hangs up the Skype call with YoYo in a rage, standing and pacing the length of his bunk like a caged animal. How could she do this to him? 

He’s not even sure which ‘she’ he means. Daisy, or YoYo. 

Daisy is–she’s _Daisy._  There is so much love there, the kind that makes his soul ache with it. The things they had seen and done together since becoming partners, and the trust that they had built from the pieces of nothing–it’s all gone, all disappeared.

And now he has to watch her tear herself to pieces, fracture herself, run around with some demon of a man who is surely nothing but trouble. 

He doesn’t trust whatever she’s up to. He doesn’t trust her anymore. 

He knows she’d still leap in front of a bullet for him. That’s not the problem. The problem is that he can’t trust her to save her own life.

And if she dies? Well, if she dies out there, he’ll go out of his freaking _mind_. 

In the years since the fall of SHIELD, each and every person he has gained is eventually taken away. 

He can’t even touch what’s going on with YoYo. She betrayed his trust, listened to him cry–literally _cry_ –over his worry for Daisy. And she knew, all along, where Daisy was. She had been speaking to her. She had probably helped her stay a few steps ahead of them, all the time. 

He wishes Hunter were here. They could crack open a beer and Hunter could most definitely top YoYo’s lie with a lie that Bobbi had told him. That laundry list is long, and one that Mack ordinarily hated being involved in. Being involved in it would be pretty good right about now. 

He wishes Bobbi were here too. Maybe she could make him understand how someone could do this. 

He takes a shaking breath and flops back onto his bed, his forearm covering his eyes. 

Tremors and YoYo. His two favorite girls, and they’ve both broken his heart.

**[Four: Jemma]**

Her relentless grapple for power had paid off, after all, which is how she knows every detail of Fitz and Mack’s mission before either of them have shared it with her. 

And it’s also how she knows what the Director has done to May. 

There have been a lot of things Jemma compromised on throughout this process, things she hid from her boyfriend, her friends, and her team on the behalf of the Director.

But this? She had gone straight to Coulson and informed him of the situation. May, in a strait jacket, screaming for everyone to get away from her.

Jemma tears her eyes away from the screen, where May’s terror plays out through the cameras Jemma has access to. 

After everything, she can’t quite believe it’s come to this. May is the strongest woman she knows. To see her so out of control of herself is terrifying and heartbreaking. None of them can afford to lose her–as a leader, as a mentor, as a friend. 

She’s already lost Daisy, the closest thing to a sibling Jemma has ever had. She clicks the home button on her phone and the bouquet of daisies that she had brought Jemma after Maveth light up the background. 

On the ninth day of Daisy’s absence, Jemma had changed it to this picture. This one small bit of sunshine. The small piece of Daisy’s smile that she can hold onto. 

From the details of the mission logs, Jemma knows that Daisy is seriously injured. Mack’s splint isn’t going to hold up much longer. 

She looks back at the screen, cringing with a small gasp as one of the agents sedates May–far more violently than necessary. 

With a shaking breath, Jemma squares her shoulders and makes herself a promise. 

These women have saved her life more than once. 

She’s going to save both of theirs. She grabs the go-bag underneath her desk and hustles into the hallway to join Coulson on his rescue mission to retrieve May. 

And once she’s made sure May is alive and safe, she’s coming for Daisy. 

Jemma has two PhDs and a guilt complex the size of Mount Everest. She knows a thing or two about what her friend is going through, but she’s the only one who has yet to speak with her. 

It’s time they had a talk. Jemma won’t come back to this base until they do. 


End file.
